USSF needs to re-think how soccer in America is organized. Too much of what is done here is home-made, and not in sync with what is done elsewhere. Some of that is necessary (soccer here is, after all, the #5 sport at best for our attentions). But some is simply shooting ourselves in the foot.
PLEASE stop using college soccer as part of the development program for American youth. I give you as an example a player I just chose at random: Alex Crognale of the Columbus Crew. Mr. Crognale is from Ohio. At the age of 15, he was signed into the Columbus Crew SC Academy, where he played from 2010 to 2013, on a team that was the Ohio South State champions two years running. Then…
he went to Maryland, and for four years there, played in 73 games (69 starts), doing a very good job as college soccer goes. Upon exiting college, he was selected by the Crew and did fairly well for them at central defense (17 appearances, 12 starts).
Now, my point is, here is a player who has been Crew property for seven years, really. But for four of those years, he ended up foisted off onto a system that the Crew has no control over, playing a weird form of U-23 soccer with far fewer appearances than he would get in that time frame had he been a member of a Crew U-23 team. By now, he might well be a very serviceable central defender (which, given the performance last night, the US could certainly use!), but the system sends him off to college, on the assumption, I guess, that what is good for the NFL must be good for MLS. I don’t think there’s much evidence to support that thesis.
PLEASE hire a quality coach for the national team, one with plenty of excellent experience in national team management. It was no shock to me that Bora Milutinovic got us to the USA '94 knockout round. It was no shock to me, either, that Bob Bradley laid big eggs for us as a national team coach (not to mention saddling us with his son as a can’t be left out team member). Maybe we could get Roberto Martínez after this year’s Cup (assuming he wants to leave Belgium).
Stop having our national league be so poor in quality that 35 y.o. ex-Premier League players can come over, immediately start, and make PoY impacts. That, to me, more than anything else, says what the real quality of American soccer is. And since we have relatively few top players off overseas anymore, that’s a problem.
I have never seen a player shell out $15,000 for soccer. I’m sure it has happened but it is a huge outlier. I have been involved with clubs all over the east coast, I have two kids who play, I coach at a club that just won a national championship (and my dad was the president of an excellent club my entire childhood)- $15,000 is insane an no where near the norm.
Your average ‘pay to play’ player is U12, pays around $800 per year to the club. Add on $75 for uniform ($150 over two years) and two nights at a hotel (most of these teams will do two ‘out of town’ tournaments per year, usually 2-3 hours from home), $135 x 2.
So you’re talking $1,145 for a year. Not including the few bucks in gas to drive to local league games.
So what does this average player get for that cost (which is still high, ideally kids would pay very little)?
Your average club will have two practices per week plus one ‘technical’ practice per week. That works out to (accounting for holidays and the like) 93 training sessions. There are 2 ‘regular’ seasons, most leagues will have between 8-12 games per season so lets average that and do 10 games per season. So that gives us 20 games. Then the two tournaments, with at least 3 games per tournament gives an additional 6 games.
That gives us a grand total of 119 (conservatively) sessions per year (training and games). Divide the $1,145 by 119 and we come up with $9.60 per ‘session’.
I think that’s high, but still much lower than many activities. Heck, most babysitters charge more than that per hour.
I’m in the DC area, but it wasn’t a news report about this area, it was on CBS Sunday Morning or some such show. I don’t know the costs of the local teams as my daughter is not on one, but I do know people who have dropped out because it costs more. I gave a quick look around and couldn’t find pricing on the teams, you have to register to find out prices. But I did find one place that you can get financial aid for the program. I don’t think they would offer financial aid for families for $800 in fees in one of the wealthiest areas in the country.
I’m sure it is a bit more expensive in very wealth areas but all clubs I am familiar with offer financial aid. I looked at a random DC area club (Washington Soccer Club) and their fees are:
When compared to the costs to play recreational soccer, the costs of travel soccer can appear quite substantial. Basic costs for a travel team include seasonal league, state, and WSC fees. There may also be fees for play in a winter league and/or for summer camp. Further, there are periodic uniform, equipment, and tournament expenses i.e. entry fees and related travel and housing costs.Finally, if the team has a paid coach, there is the cost of the coach’s compensation. Because WSC travel teams present a variety of profiles in each of these expense areas, annual costs vary considerably among them.However, it is likely that the total costs for each player on a team would range from $750 to $2,000 per Seasonal Year.
So yeah. I’m sure it is expensive in NYC and dirt cheap in other more rural areas. I know excellent clubs in smaller sized cities that are $400 per year.
I found this article from 2015 where a family is paying $17,000 for their kids to play. I couldn’t tell how many of their kids are playing, but even if it’s all 4 it’s still over $4000 a year per kid.
It doesn’t really work for the NFL either. College football teams are built to win college football games using a team full of college football players. Only the best of the best will be in the NFL, the rest of those players are playing the highest level of football they will ever play. So college football doesn’t train and play with the intent of preparing players for an NFL career, they just want to win.
So you get QBs who are great in college and aren’t good in the NFL because nobody plays the kind of offense most college teams play (though you do still occasionally get a QB who is successful as a rookie, but most need to spend a year just learning before playing). Even worse is an offensive lineman; there just aren’t any good OL players drafted. There are potentially good players if you can get them to unlearn a million bad habits from college. But college is just not geared for producing NFL-ready players and probably never will be.
That’s why there have been calls for years to create a developmental league for the NFL the way MLB does. My point is that soccer isn’t alone in its problems, the NFL would benefit from a change too.
Coaches here bench players that attempt to play direct.
I have seen players benched after an assist when they hit a 30-yard lofted pass to a streaking forward.
I have seen forwards benched for playing retained instead of doing the Rooney thing and messing up the defense whilst allowing the other team to compress.
I have also been to USSF Coaching classes where you were marked down if you (as the coach) wore your socks wrong.
IFwiw, I can’t relate to any of this. The whole point of football is a random group of kids lay out two items of discarded clothing (for goal posts) and kick anything - beginning with a tennis ball if it’s all you have - for hours and hours and hours. Football/soccer is the ultimate low entry level participation sport. FFS, in most of the world - Africa, Asia, central & south America - footwear is optional.
Just came to mind; Harry Kane - current Tottenham and England striker - tells a story of having a kick about in his street with his mates, as they used to do for hours, and a big posh car stops. The then Totttenham and England striker Jermaine Defoe gets out and joins in the kick about - and that isn’t in the old black and white photo days, though maybe 12-14 years ago now.
US Soccer recently revealed it was $100million in the bank and was trying to figure out what to use it for - this could be what to use it for.
I’m pretty sure that Columbus really didn’t want him to go to college, but a lot of people still have that mentality that college is important. You can’t really stop a player from going to college if you haven’t signed him to a professional contract.
Bob Bradley also gave us one of our greatest wins of all time, the 2-0 win over Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup, ending Spain’s 35 game unbeaten streak and 15 game winning streak.
I don’t recall the last 35 year old ex-Prem players that have had Player of the Year impacts. That seems out of date take on MLS. Now Lampard had a decent year after he finally come across the pond (after he was so good for Man City on loan, they decided to extend him for the entire season - and then he promptly got injured for NYCFC that year), but Gerrard was an abysmal failure.
MLS doesn’t send players to college, the players choose it. Why? Because being a professional athlete is a risky career and MLS doesn’t pay well enough to risk it without a backup plan
Maybe you guys have nailed it. tbf, if football/soccer was a middle class, perhaps even middle class socially-orientated sport anywhere, it would fail.
It just has never been anything other than a working class, grassroots, kick a rag ball game. Anywhere.
I didn’t say MLS sends them to college, but it relies upon the college system to finish their development in the crucial period they are U-23 players. Imagine if English soccer players destined for the Premier League all spent their U-23 years playing for Oxbridge. :rolleyes:
MLS and USSF can change this, but they need to commit to actually spending the resources to provide better training conditions during those years. Which, my point was, they need to do.
How can they do that? Kids choose college over going pro. There aren’t the financial resources in place to make MLS more attractive than college for the vast majority of academy players.
Um, they don’t rely on the college system to finish their development. They’d rather the players NOT go to college. And are trying to circumvent them from doing so by having them sign homegrown contracts as soon as they are legally able to do so - and now have the money to offer them a little more than just the pro minimums.
The clubs are, of course, pushing for the pro route.
Im no expert on US soccer but do have a few tentative thoughts.
The development of a national soccer system is never linear. They all have their ups and downs. It’s impossible at this moment to decide if there is a rot at the heart of the US system, or if this is simply a temporary setback.
I do think I spotted a reduction in the skill and technical level of US players at the last WC. I thought the US team got by on teamwork. The actual standard of individual player I thought lacking compared to past players and teams. Teamwork is good; teamwork can paper over a variety of cracks. However, at some point teamwork alone will not be good enough.
A necessary first step, IMHO. Probably doesn’t get to the heart of the issue, which strike me as fundamental and organizational. But I just can’t picture leaving him on when everything else needs to change.
The USSF is sitting on $100M in money that could easily be used to promote development in a fashion other than using colleges. And no offense, but simply saying that the current system is what is being chosen (hence, why it’s the current system) is not going to change too much.
But go ahead and keep defending the indefensible.
The United States should own virtually every team in CONCACAF, except for México. We have the resources, and we have the talent pool. Qualification for the Cup should NEVER be in doubt. We just finished behind the 60th- and 74th-ranked teams in the world, and did so by losing to the 99th-ranked team. The national team is devoid of players in a very crucial age group (except, of course, for Pulisic). There’s very few OTHER than Pulisic who have the ability to start for a first-division side in Europe, and we’re so lacking in strong, young players that we continue to employ a number of older, has-beens in the national team (the AVERAGE age of the keepers on the team was 36!). We get excited about doing things like winning the Gold Cup (whoopie), or doing well in the Confederations Cup (whoopie), but can’t see that our efforts in the World Cup since 2002 don’t show much improvement at all over the 1994 effort!
But go ahead, by all means, don’t try to change anything about player development. Let college soccer eat up our good players and spit them out devoid of any real development. Continue to refuse to imitate systems that produce much better players in Europe and South America, because, you know, we’re Americans and everything we do is special.
